


pick a spot and shoot the breeze

by wordsfaiil



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe- Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, Broken Bones, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, OOC, Photographer Connor, Suicide Attempt, Tree Bros, autistic evan, depersonalisation, idek what this is going to be yet lmao, im a slut for photographer connor, mental illness focused, mostly Connor's POV, slow burn maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 22:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11045958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsfaiil/pseuds/wordsfaiil
Summary: Sometimes his mom wanted to see the photos he took after he got them developed and she'd always stare at them with a mixture of shock and distaste as she flicked through the images. Connor wanted his emotions to feed into his work to get all the bad shit out of his system, so it wasn't as if he was going out photographing rainbows and smiles. He was more into gritty pavements and blood stains and abandoned places.





	1. Falling In A Forest

Connor adjusted the light aperture and clicked the shutter on his camera with practiced ease. Just the soft _clink_ of the button made the tightly held tension in his shoulders drop.  
Taking photographs was always so peaceful in the forest and it was the only one time Connor's crowded and chaotic mind could calm. His bitten raw fingers gripped round his old, battered SLR camera and one by one his fingers would loosen the longer he spent traipsing his town alone to find obscure things to photograph; especially when he was swamped in trees.  
Sometimes his mom wanted to see the photos he took after he got them developed and she'd always stare at them with a mixture of shock and distaste as she flicked through the images. Connor wanted his emotions to feed into his work to get all the bad shit out of his system, so it wasn't as if he was going out photographing rainbows and smiles. He was more into gritty pavements and blood stains and abandoned places. His mom...not so much.  
Though sometimes... sometimes he needed quiet interludes where he did find happy and peaceful stuff, like in the forest.

The trees in the forest that enveloped him right now always reminded him of rare slices of his childhood which were made up of somewhat fond memories. They were bittersweet ones where he could only remember the soft smiles of his parents, the giggling of his younger sister and his plastic windable camera held in his small hands. It didn't take very good photos of course, but it was where his photography passion started. His mom was so thrilled about it and Zoe loved to pose for him, holding up fallen apples and balancing them on her head.  


Those were all memories that took place in the old apple orchard he used to visit all the time as a kid and now that it was shut down, (Connor couldnt remember why) that was Connor's go to abandoned place. So the town's local forest was always his best bet to find masses of trees which were actually still alive and thriving with life. It was the closest he could get to the nostalgic feelings he wished he could've taken better photos of. The ones he had were blurry and out of focus and sometimes you only got to see a slither of Zoe's beaming face as he took a photo out of shot. It didn't help that the small prints were also wrinkled and dog eared with age and that some of them had his father's face scribbled out in scruffy biro lines.

The air today was warm and the sun dappled the skin of his face in intricate patterns as it blinked through the gaps in the leaves that surrounded him. It was summer time now, stifling and muggy weather crept all around the town like a hellish fog and Connor wouldn't take his sweaty hoodie off for it, no matter how much it chased him. He didn't like to see the scars on his skin and no one else would either. Not that anyone would really care. However, under these trees it was full of blissful shade and on just the right side of hot. It was Connor's favourite temperature and not to be emo, but it was one of Connor's many reasons to live; the breeze felt like a hug and the warmth a tight squeeze. He hadn't had either of those in a long time. 

He paused on the edge of the stretching, golden wheat field before him, just on the outskirts where the shade of the trees gave way to the blinding sun up ahead. The wheat tossed and swayed about and the sky above it, blue and spotless was a striking contrast to it. Blue and yellow; good, cheerful colours. Connor raised his camera, adjusted the light aperture and exposure settings again and then- **THUD!**

His finger slipped on the button in surprise and he knew the photo would come out crooked. A waste of a shot. Damn it.  
Connor's heart beat wildly at the sound he'd heard and he glanced around nervously, his breath came out a little too quickly. It was like the press of his camera had caused it! Helooked at the object in his hand with wide eyes before he realised stupidly, yeah, cameras didn't do that. Or at least his hadn't done that before. He swallowed and turned around to the trees, his eyes flicked round to find what the cause of it was. Maybe just a tree falling? Animals causing some ruckus? One of those park rangers he'd spotted a couple times over the summer?

Then, a soft sound broke the silence that had followed the huge noise before. Connor tipped his head towards where he thought it was coming from and he brushed aside his long hair so his ears could listen hard. It sounded like... wait it sounded as if someone was... _crying?_ It was coming from a little way into the trees and to the right, where the oaks were larger and more ominous. They stood taller than houses and the branches swayed and roared in the gentle wind.  
Connor's breath caught in his throat for a moment...had someone fallen from one of those?! Shit, how was he supposed to deal with this?! He didn't know first aid and how the hell would an ambulance get out here?! Connor rubbed between his eyebrows with his free hand and sighed, maybe he could just...leave the person?

Connor dropped his hand and the crying had begun to sound more louder and choked and desperate and in _pain_. Fuck. He let go of his camera and let it thump into his chest where it was hung by a strap around his neck. He wrung his hands and bit his lip. The crying picked up even harder and jesus fuck, okay, he'd have to deal with this. Find the person, call 911 and go home when they got here. Fine. Good. Perfect. Maybe his mom would be happy he was being a good citizen.

He sucked in a large breath, let it out and strode off in the direction he supposed was right. The crying sounded nearer as he came closer to where it was and he crept round trees and over logs and small dips in the ground till he came to one singular tree. The smooth bark was well worn and dented with footholds and perfect climbing spots and the branches were spread enough that they met easily to provide routes all the way to the very high top. Fuck, that was a big tree. The crying was coming from the other side and Connor paused to build up some courage. The sobs were wet, gross and thick with snot and he was scared to know what he would find. A broken, bloody person? Limbs twisted weirdly and skin all torn up, maybe with twigs empaled into their eyes? Fuck, he loved to photograph gruesome things, scoured for them even, but this would be something his strong stomach wouldn't be able to handle.  
He took a tiny tiptoe to the side and found a battered blue shoe attached to a seemingly intact leg which wore beige khakis caked in mud and bracken. A familiar but unplaceable-looking back pack was strewn ahead further from the tree trunk.

Connor squeezed his eyes shut, took in a large gulp of breath and walked round the tree before he new what he was doing

Connor shunted to a stop and his eyes flickered open and there he was: Evan Hansen, from school, laying on the ground. His left arm was twisted painfully behind him and his soft face was red with small grazes and damp with tears. His eyes were squeezed shut and his teeth were gritted in pain. He looked a mess, although nothing seemed to be broken, except maybe the arm he'd landed on. The rest of his skin was covered in marks from the branches he'd hit on the way down, there wasn't much blood. Connor let his deep breath blow out harshly from his nose. Now what?

Connor knocked himself out of just staring and stepped over to Evan and knelt down tentatively. He reached a hand out to shake the boys shoulder and said dumbly, "U-uh hey-"

Evan startled immediately and his eyes flew open and he tried to recoil, but his arm pulled painfully beneath him. He hissed in agony and the tears fell faster. Geeze that crying was gonna give him one hell of a headache later, or maybe he'd just have concussion from the fall. What the hell did Connor know?

"Hey! Don't move so quick you're gonna wreck yourself some more, stupid." Connor hissed.

Evan curled in on himself and through sobbing gasps grit out, "G-go away." His voice cracked and Connor's heart tugged at the sad sound. Evan sounded so hopeless.  
Connor looked up at the tree, tucked his unruly hair behind his ears, then looked to the back pack which he now noticed had a piece of paper neatly safety-pinned to the front of it. A note. Shit...this wasn't what he thought it was, was it? Evan couldn't have jumped. Connor looked up at tree again and guessed it was maybe 30ft high, enough to probably kill someone -or not if Evan was any evidence.

"No. No I'm not going away." Connor growled, "You need help and-and I'm the only one here alright. Try to be at least a little fucking considerate; it's not like anyone else would come for you." Connor regretted what he said instantly, but his brain somehow never had any filter and whatever usually came out of his mouth was venomous and belittling. Not his fault. Thats just how he was.

"J-just please go." Evan wheezed and clutched his chest, his fist curled into the fabric of his blue polo. He'd probably winded himself from the fall and Connor didn't even want to think of how bruised and broken Evan's ribs might be too. "No one was s-s-supposed to b-be out here!"

Connor blinked, "Well sorry, but I am. I heard crying and I'm not that much of a fucking asshole to walk away, contrary to popular belief. Now come on, I'm gonna roll you so your arm isn't stuck, alright?"

Evan hesitated and then nodded once.

Connor reached out slowly, "Tell me if it hurts too bad."

Evan nodded again, body tensed in suspense. Connor's hand held Evan's shoulders as gently as he could and he rolled the boy onto his front so that his arm would be free. Evan stifled a painful groan behind his teeth and Connor flinched for him. The arm was...definitely broken. Probably a clean break, because although it was crooked and swollen, there wasn't any bones popping out anywhere, thank god. Evan pressed his face into the dirt and squeezed his eyes shut tight again as Connor rolled him once more so he was situated on his back, staring up at the tree he'd fallen from. Maybe rolling him onto his back wasn't such a good idea because when Evan's eyes focused in on the high branches that towered above them, his breathing began to pick up and Connor flapped his hands around uselessly. How in the fuck are you supposed to deal with an anxiety attack? Connor fumbled around clumsily for his phone that was tucked into his messenger bag he'd had slung over his shoulder and with shaky fingers dialled 911. There was a short sound of the dial tone before, "911, whats your emergency?"

"Uh, someone's fallen from a really fucking tall tree and-and I mean really tall. His arm is broken and he's panicking and I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing." Connor's own chest started to feel tight and he felt Evan's unhurt hand reach out and hold onto the front of Connor's black hoodie in a vice grip. He looked down in suprise and found Evan was shaking his head fiercely and he whimpered quietly, "D-don't make them come here. Please don't, please! My mom d-d-doesnt need to know. I'm fine! I'm fine, I'm fine-"

"How badly is he hurt? Has he passed out?" The woman asked in a calm, clinical tone that grated against Connor's brain.

"There's a lot of scratches and his arm looks broken and maybe his ribs too? I don't know. He's awake though uh-"

"I'm going to need an address, honey so we can get someone to come and fix him up."

"Um," Connor looked around frantically as if he'd find a sign post with an address on it, but this was a fucking forest so of course there wasn't. "There's not really an address? I'm in the local forest the one with all the park rangers and shit and, we're by the wheat field, with all the trees? the huge oak trees, like I said." He swallowed down some tight breaths. Evan's hand curled tighter round the fabric of his hoodie.

There was some soft typing noises, "Okay sweetheart, we'll try our best to find you. I need you both to take some deep breaths okay, in for 7 and out for 4 okay, breathe with me. Make sure he doesn't pass out, okay?"

Connor and Evan did the breathing together for a little while along with the woman and then the she stopped and said "The services are on their way. Keep breathing, keep calm both of you-"

"Okay. Okay thanks." Connor ended the call abruptly and flung his phone down and decided his camera should come off too. It landed unceremoniously beside his phone in the dirt and the mud coated the uncapped lens. Connor realised that both his knees were covered in it and that Evan had some on his face too. He wanted to rub it away from Evan's skin, but decided that would be a little too weird and invasive. Especially because this was their first proper conversation since middle school and even in middle school, touching Evan's face would've been weird and they didn't exactly talk much. Thrn again, no one ever really did talk to either of them.

Evan was panicking less now, because of the breathing technique he already seemed familiar with. His tears had begun to dry out, although his hand still wouldnt let go of Connor's hoodie. 

"Why'd you jump out of the tree?" Connor said firm and quiet. His voice was a little too confrontational and stoic for his liking, though like before, not his fault.

Evan swallowed audibly and his eyes shifted to the tree trunk, "I fell."

"Bull shit, Hansen."

"You-you remember my name?

"Well yeah, we've always gone to school together."

"I-I know, but no one really ever...pays attention to me...I thought maybe you'd forgotten." Evan closed his eyes. 

"Shut up and answer me. Why'd you jump?" Connor panicked that Evan might pass out so he almost shouted at him when he said it.

Evan was silent for a moment and his mouth opened and closed. Then he opened his eyes and stared right into Connor's, "I just. I j-just hoped maybe I'd be found for once and I-I knew it was a long shot, because like you said, I haven't got anyone else. I went up there anyway and I f-felt so empty and alone and I wanted to die so I ... I let go." he started to sob gently again and Connor hooked his hand around Evan's and squeezed it tight. The skin on skin contact shocked him for a second and he wanted to pull away, but Evan looked at him with wide, blue, watery eyes and he couldn't find it in him too. It was like looking at a sad puppy. A very convincing sad puppy. Connor didn't even like puppies.

"Somebody did find you." Connor whispered uncomfortably and looked away. He fiddled with a thread on his ripped jeans and rubbed some mud away with his fingertips.

Evan nodded and suddenly the sound of a helicopter came from over head. It roared close by for a few minutes before it landed in the wheat field. The propellers whipped the wind around them and it sliced into them briefly before the engines turned off and the wind calmed. The loose part of the note on Evan's backpack flopped back down gently onto it.

"The ambulance." Connor murmured.

Evan started to cry loudly again and Connor tried to force back his own tears. 

He reached for his phone and camera.

So much for a peaceful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't written a fanfic in five years and 14 year old me used to write Jedward self-insert fanfics on twitter so i'm sorry if this sucks lmao
> 
> but do i carry on with this? thats the question  
> i like writing soft photographer connor a lot  
> this is rly ooc though but sometimes people like that shit y know  
> i know i do lmao
> 
> anyway pls hmu if i should carry on  
> i have some ideas, but my motivation is bad without ppl pushing me to get shit done 
> 
> follow me on tumblr kiddos  
> w0rdsfail


	2. Don't Think About It.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for brief mention of self-harm and suicide and Larry just genuinely being a dickhead
> 
> also this is super long, sorry

Connor went home right away. That’s what he did. That’s what he likes to think he did as he turned up on his street, just as the sun had begun to drip down like a slowly melting ice cream behind the rows of fake-fancy houses he walked by. The twilight air had just set in, humid and clingy, but with an underlying cool breeze that dragged the mosquitos out from their slumber to collect in groups in the air. Connor had to dodge through them with his mouth clamped shut, so that he didn’t swallow some as he tiredly trudged along and scrubbed at his dry eyes. 

What he didn't want to think about was Evan crying profusely, the obliterating roaring sound of the helicopter all around them, the nauseating sights from up so high from the ground, the rush through multiple doors and the squeak of gurney wheels, the strenuous waiting in a packed room of injured and ill people, the suffocating sterile smell that hospitals reeked of, more crying and questions questions questions.

Connor felt like he’d experienced more in the past few hours than he had ever done in his seventeen years of life. Ever.

He felt overwhelmed and just. He just really, really didn’t want to think about it. Every time he thought of Evan’s tired face as they both watched the cast being slopped onto his painful broken arm and the way the doctors kept glancing at Connor warily, like he might take _them_ outside to push _them_ out of a tree - he felt his mouth dry out and he had to swallow multiple times to make it go away.  
That’s what they’d thought he’d done, the hospital staff; that he had pushed suicidal Evan Hansen with the broken arm out of a god damn tree. And yeah, maybe that was something Connor could be believed to do, especially after the infamous Miss.G Printer Incident of Second Grade and then there was the time in ninth grade when he punched that dickhead, Jared Kleinman, square on the jaw and cracked one of the guy's molars in half. But that was school.  
This was a hospital full of people that didn’t know him at all, but they had taken one look at him and thought, _“Mm, yeah. He looks like he could be prone to pushing innocent people out of trees. We better get the police to corner him and ask him some confusing shit and then hold him against his will in the hospital for another few awful hours, when he'd much rather hang himself with the strap of his camera!”_

Maybe Kleinman had spouted fake horror stories about Connor to the nurses those couple years ago when Jared's mom had to come into school that day to take him to hospital, because his mouth wouldn’t stop bleeding. Maybe he had given them mass printed, black and white photocopied pictures of Connor from the school yearbook and made sure each hospital staff member carried one in their pocket at all times so they could watch out for Connor Murphy: printer thrower, face puncher and …pushing people out of trees-er, apparently. Maybe they were even specially printed in colour to make his weird coloured eyes recognisable!

He didn’t want to think about it.

Connor looked at the sun again as it slowly turned into more of a spreading, dissipating ink blot as it washed away for tonights moon. He paused in his steps for a moment and admired the smokey, stormy blues that faded into soft shades of purple into orange into pink – he’d taken so many photos of that sky before. Connor looked at the line of trees in front of it, black silhouettes that looked like they had been intricately cut out of card and glued carefully on top of it. He would probably never look at trees the same way again. Neither would Evan. Connor’s mouth went dry. Don’t think about it. It didn’t happen. 

He picked up his footsteps again, his combat boots slapped the sun warmed pavement as he dodged more mosquitos. Connor wanted to get back before the sun had gone to sleep entirely, because then his dad wouldn't be mad that he’d stayed out ‘late’ - as if they still lived in the ages where they told time by looking at shadows casted by a stick, or some shit. Connor twisted his hands tightly round the worn strap of his messenger bag and focused on the rhythmic bump of his camera against his chest with each long stride he took. 

He would need to pretend he’d just got back from a day of taking hundreds of photographs in the forest as planned, like he was supposed to, but instead he’d-

DON’T FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT.

Connor finally reached the wide driveway of his house, the furthest one up the street and took swift steps past the two cars on it and up to his front porch. The porch was embarrassingly over decorated with unnecessary swirls and wrought iron that was stamped into little spiked fences and lions. They even had a lion shaped knocker that nobody used. Fake-fancy like every other house on this street. Houses full of people who were kinda rich, but not super rich, that told people they were super rich.  
He dug around in his bag for his keys, however the front door swung open before he could even find them. He looked up from behind his unruly curtain of hair and found his dad stood taking up the entire doorway with his hands on his hips and a huge and ever omnipresent frown on his face. Oh great. The disappointed, angry dad look. Connor rarely ever saw another look, so maybe it was just The Larry Look. Fucking Larry.

"Connor." His dad grit out and Connor swallowed tightly as mixed feelings of nerves and anger bled into his chest. His dad's entire being made him buzz with uncontrollable fury, but there was always that underlying fear of knowing he had no real power against him. He pulled his hands out of his bag and his bitten fingers came up to twist the zoom on his camera lens anxiously. The cap had come off somewhere and he assumed it was in the forest, forgotten in the dirt that Evan had made a solid imprint in. He'd have to go back for it at some point, however the thought of going near that tree ever again made him want to vomit violently over his dad's shiny work shoes. He didn't think Larry would be too pleased with that, they were freshly polished by an actual shoe shiner.

"Hey, dad." Connor tried a smile, but it came out too forced and awkward looking. A grimace. He'd been using that god-awful smile all afternoon, so that no one would falsely put him in hand cuffs. It had worked all day, though his father could always see right through it. Larry sighed, a loud and huffy one like an agitated horse and stepped aside so that Connor could pass by him into the hallway. 

Connor was about to book it up the wide flight of stairs just off from the front door, so that he could go up to his room and scream into his pillow for a long while in peace, but his dad snatched him back with the fabric of his hoodie. His hair got caught in the grip and he let out an embarrassing yelp sound. Connor panicked and spun around so fast that he had to grab onto the banister of the stairs before he could topple over his own feet.

"What the fuck?!" he gasped.

Larry's strong hold on the slightly sweaty fabric relinquished and Connor, ruffled, straightened it back out. He hoped his clothes didn't stink of hospitals, although it would be better than the smell of weed it usually stunk of.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?!" Larry yelled, finally letting the anger out now that the door was firmly shut -he didn't like the neighbours to see him like that.  
Thats right! The Murphy's were a kind, happy, tight-knit family! No arguments or dysfunctional family relationships to be seen! Larry-fucking-Murphy was a well respected man who would never dare to shout at his well behaved son! 

Connor flinched at his dad's tone of voice, before he reminded himself: don't take any shit from anyone. Not even Fucking Larry. He straightened his back and his face pulled into a glare of its own accord.

"Out." Connor answered. Blunt. Dismissive. As always. He folded his arms over his chest and kept his face turned towards a photo frame on the wall in front of him. It was one of the few photographs he had taken a few years ago when their family was mostly functional and the laughter wasn't so fake. Their faces all had relaxed smiles and Connor was vacant in it, he was on the other side of the camera instead. Connor didn't notice at the time that his father was happy for the photo to just be the trio; himself, Cynthia and Zoe; his eyes were lit up and his arms were comfortably snug around their shoulders. No nine year old Connor to be seen. A happy little family with the problem taken away from it. The photograph was neatly tucked into a specially made mahogany frame with the word 'family' engraved into the wood. Connor wanted to smash his fist into it.

Connor heard a clatter coming from the kitchen which meant his mom had either just set down dinner or they'd just finished. The latter, probably; it was pretty late for a dinner in the Murphy household if the clock high up on the wall was right. He couldn't hear Zoe complaining about him in there either, she was probably safely tucked up in her room for the rest of the night now. Away from Connor.

"Connor, is that you?" Cynthia called and she popped her head round the doorframe with a tea towel in her hands and her hair tied back. "You missed dinner, sweetie!" she had that strained smile forced onto her tired face, just like the one Connor had been wearing all day. She was trying to be a good mom to him again. Stupid idea, because his dad would shoot that idea out of the water the minute Cynthia dipped her toes in. Connor didn't blame him.

"He missed dinner because he was probably out getting high again." Larry snorted with no humour and pushed Connor towards the expansive kitchen with a hefty shove to his shoulder. Connor's camera swung side to side on his neck and the friction of the strap around it calmed him slightly. Only slightly. He still felt like hanging himself with it. His boots squeaked on the laminate flooring of the hallway as he dragged his feet all the way into the brightly lit, spotless room and he was shocked for a moment at how hospital-like this was too. Just a room of necessary objects, but no homely or comforting feeling about it at all. A lot of crying was done in this room too, actually -another similarity. 

"I wasn't getting fucking high." Connor snapped and yanked out his chair at the dinner table, which screeched across the black tiles and dropped himself down into it with the etiquette of a true, lazy, teenage boy. His mum pulled a cellophane covered plate out from inside a cupboard and set it down in front of him. She began to busy herself with uselessly straightening things out on the countertops and in the cupboards like she did whilst she awaited the storm to begin and wanted to dither round the edges like an unhelpful referee.

Connor took his bag off, dumped it by the table leg and set his camera down carefully onto the table, pushed towards the middle so it wouldn't get knocked off if Larry got rowdy. Then he ripped the plastic off his plate haphazardly and picked up the knife and fork left out for him. His hands clenched around the metal tightly, his body tensed in anticipation for the argument he and his father had basically every fucking night. At least Zoe wouldn't be there to chip in on it and make everything worse like she always did. Having the two of them on his back at once was like being socked in the face and then in the stomach in quick succession and he always struggled more to keep a brave face when that happened. 

One-on-One with Larry was like a petty game of ping pong that ended with Connor storming off to slam his bedroom door and Larry storming off to slam his garage door. There were never any winners. 

He looked down at his plate of cold pasta and dragged his fork through it in disinterest. He knew he ought to be hungry, what with only eating something early this morning before he left for the forest and spent all day at the hospital with Evan, just staring at the vending machine he didn't bring money for. It's not like he planned to encounter a vending machine, or Evan Hansen. However, the food before him made a tight, sick feeling erupt into his stomach. He set the utensils down.

Larry snorted at Connor and leaned back against the counter, arms folded. "What? Not got the munchies?"

"I wasn't getting high!" Connor shouted and angrily shoved his fork so it skittered across the table and landed at his mothers feet who jumped away from it. 

"Connor, calm down please." Cynthia said weakly and bent down to collect the fork and take out a new one, from an overpriced utensil holder by the microwave. Why couldn't they just put them in drawers? They had plenty of those. "Just eat your dinner, okay?"

"Look at his eyes, Cynthia!" Larry gestured to Connor's face who ducked his head down on instinct and stared grimly at the unappetising plate of pasta. A fork was placed gently beside it. "His eyes are red! He's obviously been smoking."

More like he'd cried for a little bit in one of the brightly lit hospital bathrooms, because it all got a bit much for him when Evan had whispered a gentle and croaky, "I'm s-sorry for causing an inconvenience." As if his almost death was compared to that of a retail worker ringing up your items slowly because the cash register was frozen.

Not like it happened though.

If he didn't think about it, then it never happened.

Like that weird cat in a box philosophical theory or something.

Don't think about it.

Connor growled and shoved his plate which went flying across the table too, though it thankfully stopped short at the end of it. "I'm not high! I've been taking photos all day, like I told you I was doing! Look, I even have a roll of film finished!" Connor snatched up his bag and riffled through it, he pushed through loose bits of scrap paper covered in doodles, the detachable camera flash, old empty weed baggies, his phone, a lighter, pens, keys, empty film roll cases and his favourite book. All in search of the photographic film canister he'd stuck his winded up film in whilst he was at the hospital with nothing to do. The film had been unfinished and Connor was yet to go to a dark room to make a contact sheet and develop it, but he didn't want to finish the roll -or develop it really. Who wanted a collection of photographs to commemorate the day a boy you hardly knew from school tried to launch himself out of a tree to kill himself? He'd winded the film up so fast he was worried he'd ripped it and turned it the wrong way, though he was too practiced at it. Truthfully he wanted to pry the case open with his fingers, unroll the film and then expose it to the light to let the film wash into blank negatives, so that he didn't have to look at them, but he felt bad every time he wasted film. He had stacks of plastic pocket film holder contact sheets stuffed under his bed in his room that were just failed attempts.

Connor could feel his parents scrutinising eyes on him as he continued to search for the canister, first the main pocket of his bag, then the front, then the pockets of his hoodie and scrappy jeans. The canister wasn't there. Connor shakily latched onto his camera, the weight of it not a comfort for once and popped the back to find the film compartment empty even though he knew it would be. He wasn't surprised to see it that way. He didn't have it. He told his father he had it!

Shit. Shit shit shit shit. He was in trouble. Where the fuck was it?!

His stomach dropped.

It dawned on him.

He'd set the small black cylinder aside on the wheeled table beside Evan's hospital bed to put his camera back around his neck after he closed it up. During that time, a short and calm voiced nurse had called him out of the room for what Connor assumed would be more questions from more foreboding cops, but ended up being a confirmation that he was "free to leave now Mr.Murphy." Connor had leapt at the chance to leave so quickly that he'd forgotten about the film canister he was supposed to put into his bag. He'd left it beside Evan Hansen who was sat alone in his hospital bed, still silently crying, newly casted arm held to his chest and his knees tucked up to his chin to look smaller. He hadn't even said goodbye to the poor guy.

Oh god.

He hoped Evan wasn't gonna try to kill himself again -not that he cared. Obviously. Connor Murphy didn't give two shits about anybody. 100%. Definitely. 

Connor swallowed and nervously looked up at his father who met his son's eyes expectantly and unamused. "I-I must've left it in the forest earlier on when I left to come home."

Larry scoffed, "Oh, sure!" his voice dripped with sarcasm and he shook his head in disbelief and flung his hands up into the air then flopped them to his sides. Connor could see the anger as it boiled under his fathers skin like his own temper. Red hot and rumbling like a forever active volcano. Why was Larry always so angry with him? Why not Zoe who played up all the time, just to drop Connor in shit and get him blamed for stupid things he hadn't done?

Cynthia stepped forward so that she was between the path of her son and her husband, "Larry, he's telling the truth, come on his camera is empty, look." she pointed to the camera still open in Connor's hands. Connor's fingers rubbed at the plastic clasped in his fingers and small pieces of his nail polish chipped off at the action. It scattered onto his plate of pasta his mom had pushed back to him at some point. Yeah he definitely wasn't gonna be eating that shit now.

"Or, maybe he just emptied it out before he left and spent the day getting high, isn't that right Connor?"

Connor growled, snapped the camera shut and stood up so quickly that his chair flung back and tipped over with a crash onto the tiles bellow him. He met his dads eyes furiously, "I was not getting high, I fucking told you! I took photographs in the forest and lost my canister, why can't you ever fucking believe me?!"

"Language, Connor." Cynthia said quietly and frantically, "Lets just all calm down okay-"

"Shut the fuck up!" Connor yelled at her and he pulled his camera strap over his neck, grabbed up his bag and stormed out of the kitchen. He kicked his chair on the way and it made a crunch noise as it skidded across the floor and hit the skirting board bellow a cupboard filled with pots and pans.

 

"Connor Murphy, you are grounded!" Larry shouted after him. "I'm going to be searching your room for weed and if I find any, you're going to wish you were never born!"

Jokes on you, Larry, your son already does.

"FUCK YOU!" Connor replied and stomped his way upstairs and made sure to kick one of the cracked banister poles on the way. He hoped one day after all his fury filled kicking that one might break. It didn't today. Maybe next time.

Connor grabbed ahold of his door handle, wrenched the door open, flung himself into his room and slammed the door loudly behind him. The force of it made his huge, towering book case rattle and a few loose photographs fluttered to the ground followed by an old Foo Fighters CD which thunked off an old shoe.

A muffled, angry, "Hey!" could be heard from the room beside his and Connor kicked the wall of it to shut Zoe up, leaving a black scuff mark on it. He dumped all of his belongings he'd taken out with him today down onto the end of his bed and threw himself onto it with them. He finally buried his face into his pillows, but couldn't find any energy in him to scream. He felt so _tired._ He still had that awful sick feeling in his throat and when he closed his eyes all he could see was Evan, broken on the floor of the forest. He bit the pillow instead and slammed a fist down onto his mattress. Why couldn't he have just been who Connor Murphy was believed to be and left Evan there on his own for someone else to eventually find? Why couldn't he have just been as cold and as angry as he was supposed to be?

Connor sucked in a sobbing breath, but clenched his jaw tightly to stop from crying. He'd seen enough of it and done enough of it today and he didn't need any more of it.

He rolled over onto his back and scrubbed at his eyes again with his clenched fists like a tired child. He knocked his heavy boots together in a rhythmic pattern to try and not let his mind stray too much into the dark.

He knew exactly why he couldn't have done those thing or be those things. He didn't want to admit it to himself. He didn't want to admit how Evan was like looking at a mirror image of himself. Albeit, Evan had serious anxiety issues and he seemed to have a never ending supply of tears and poor fashion sense, whereas Connor had none of that, in his opinion. But...Evan had tried to kill himself. Which meant he obviously had the same thoughts he had sometimes.  
Connor let out another small, choked breath and uncurled his fist to dig his fingers into his bed covers. Evan was probably as fucked up as him and that hit him hard.

He'd passed by that boy everyday at school and he'd never payed him any attention, because no one ever did pay Evan any anyway, so why should he? Evan was almost invisible and nothing but a quiet, polite student who never stepped out of line. Connor bit his lip at the thought that he'd walked past a boy who he could've probably had some mutual understanding with, who he might have been able to help before this happened, might have had someone to talk to as well-

Don't think about it, for fuck sake. Stop it stop it stop it!

Connor Murphy doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone. Connor Murphy doesn't want friends. Connor Murphy doesn't need anything to do with Evan fucking Hansen.

There was a sudden, timid knock at Connor's door which could only belong to his mom (his dad's knocks were always booming in time with his yelling and Zoe's were always persistent and followed by snappy, biting words.) Connor sat up, scrubbed at his face because there definitely wasn't any tears there, pulled a hand through his knotted hair and stood to open the door. 

His mom plastered that fake smile onto her face again. "Can I come in for a bit, sweetie?" she obviously didn't want to come in. 

Connor looked at her for a moment, thinking. His mom being here was better than his dad and he'd have to talk about this at some point, so he probably should let her in. He could deal with his mom better than anyone in this house.

He nodded and he sat on his bed, Cynthia let herself in and closed the door behind her and she hesitantly sat on the edge of the bed beside him, maybe a couple metres apart.

"So," she began quietly. "Where were you really today, Connor?" Connor went to interrupt and she held up a hand to silence him and he grumbled and began to unlace his boots as a distraction from the anger that boiled lightly in his chest.

"I can tell that you were telling the truth about the forest. I know my boy." -she didn't, Connor scoffed. "but theres something else, sweetie. You know you can tell me and it might get you out of trouble with your father, I know you hate being grounded."

Connor kicked his boots off onto his messy floor and folded his legs beneath him. There was still some dry mud splattered on his jeans and on the skin where the material was purposely ripped up. He brushed at it uselessly and took in a large breath. Well, he might as well be truthful. "Yeah, I was in the forest, I did take photos, but only for a while because-because-" he swallowed. He didn't exactly want to give away all the grisly details, he knew Evan wanted everything to be a secret. Or, at least the suicide part. His mom waited patiently. "Because I had to go to hospital-"

His mom gasped and her eyes flickered to her sons wrists and she latched onto them, though before she could pull the sleeves up, Connor wrenched away. Despite his gangly, thin appearance, he did have a lot of strength. I mean, it was quite obvious even a few years ago with the whole Jared and His Tooth thing and the fact that he regularly broke stuff in general. "Mom, I didn't go to the hospital for me. I'm fine, alright?"

At least physically he added on in his head.

Cynthia put her hands back on her lap and relaxed, but only slightly because her wide eyes still flickered over his arms. Connor folded them over his chest uncomfortably. He still didn't really know how his mom found out about what was under his sleeves, at least she never told anyone or really did anything about it. Though, it was nice to see she actually cared whether Connor had done enough damage to wind up in hospital. "So where did you go? What happened?"

God, this was like the never ending questions at the hospital all over again, he sighed. "A boy fell from a tree whilst I was taking photos and he broke his arm, I found him so I called an ambulance."

"A boy? Is he your friend?" she looked eager and there was a flicker of hope and happiness behind her eyes that made Connor gulp.

"I, um. Yeah, sure. A friend." Fuck. why did he say that?!

"A friend!" She lit up, "Oh honey I didn't realise you had a friend! Why didn't you ever mention him? Who is he? Do you go to school with him?"

Connor felt guilt eat at him, but his mother's happy face made him unable to stop the lies, "Yeah, his name is Evan. We go to school together. Anyway so, he had to go to hospital after falling and I waited there all day with him because, uh, thats what friends do y'know?" His mom nodded in agreement and Connor almost sighed in relief that he'd actually got a friend thing right. He didn't know how friendships worked. "And when I left, I left my film canister with Evan by mistake. I'm sure I can get it back from him. So, yeah, thats it."

"I'm so happy you have a friend, Connor! What you did is perfectly okay, I'm sure your father will understand"

Yeah, right. Larry didn't understand Connor at all. Thats usually why they were always fighting.

"You'll have to invite him over sometime so we can meet him! You can tell us all about you both being friends."

Connor clenched his jaw, "Sure, mom. Anyway, can I be left alone now? I'm tired."

Cynthia nodded, still delighted, "You get some sleep Connor, I can't imagine how exhausted you must be. Oh and get rid of any weed you have if your father still comes snooping, okay?" She patted his knee and smiled genuinely at him before leaving his room.

Connor stared at the closed door and realised how much of a mistake he'd made with one single sentence.

He and Evan weren't friends! How the fuck would he explain this to him if his mom somehow found him and asked questions? It's not like he could even turn up at Evan's house before his mom could and explain to him, ' _Sorry, but my mom thinks we're friends so we've gotta pretend now, because if she finds out the truth she'll probably cry forever and my dad will ground me for life and then I'll have to put up with Zoe constantly pissing me off till I eventually die_.' He didn't even know where the boy lived!

Connor punched his mattress again and then eyed his bag. Maybe he had dreamt it all up and the canister was really in there and the thing with Evan had never happened. He upturned it and let everything tip out onto his bed to form a haphazard pile beside his camera. He rifled through it and moved things into more organised piles, but the pile of four canisters he pried open eagerly were empty of the film he'd reeled up today.

He picked up the mostly empty weed baggies and tucked them between the pages of a book on his lowest shelf and shoved it right into the middle of the books on it. It ruined the sections he meticulously sorted his books into, but he couldn't find it in him to really care in the slightest.

Then the pile of paper he'd made caught his eye, because stuck out from between the crumpled loose, ripped out sketchbook pages, was a lined and folded over piece of paper. Connor never drew on lined paper unless he was doodling in his notebooks in a boring class and his school books had also been shoved under his bed since summer vacation had started. This wasn't his. This didn't belong to him at all.

His stomach clenched tightly and that same feeling of dread he had when he looked over at Evan's backpack earlier on today washed over him like a huge, overwhelming wave.  
The piece of paper pinned to Evan's bag. The note, the fucking note that had disappeared at some point between Evan being moved onto a hospital bed and a doctor leaving to get a time slot for Evan to get his arm casted after he'd poked around at his cracked ribs and took his vitals. He'd assumed the doctor had taken the note with him to show to Evan's mom or something, but Evan had hurriedly rushed over some words that were so clumsy Connor had to try really hard to decipher it. He'd told Connor to say that he'd just fallen from the tree, that he hadn't let go and Connor knew that Evan had somehow ripped the note off his backpack and stowed it somewhere else. He couldn't for the life of him work out exactly _where_ it had been hidden and he decided he'd leave it unanswered. Connor just nodded and confirmed that he'd relay that to whoever asked him what happened.

Now he knew.

He shakily and slowly reached for it and held onto the rough around the edge corner of the part that stuck out and pulled it from between the scribbled on pages. There were two words scrawled on the front of it that made Connor press a hand to his mouth to stop himself from letting out anymore sobs.

' _To, Nobody._ '

Evan hadn't been lying when he said he thought nobody would find him. He truly, truly believed it and Connor believed it too. Because if he hadn't of been there with Evan, no one else would be there to fill his place.

Evan was that lonely that he wrote a note that he didn't think would be read by anyone at all. And he was right. Connor couldn't bring himself to unfold it, so he crumpled it in his shaking fist and threw it into a corner of his room.

Don't think about it.

If you can't see it, it's not real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm super, super sorry this took me so long to write !!  
> ah man, all of your comments have made me feel rly gd about my writing and it's just ?? nice to see ppl appreciating the shit i post especially on this one bc all the other stuff i've posted have been shit posts lmao  
> so firstly, thank you so, so much !!!!  
> secondly, this won’t update frequently or regularly at all, bc i kinda jumped into this story without planning ahead and i struggle a lot with motivation that goes beyond a one shot and my executive dysfunction is so bad rip  
> also i have to work a job that throws odd hours at me, so sometimes i get called in on a day where i'm like HELL FUCKIN YEA I'M READY TO WRITE !!!! and then i can’t, but if you’re willing to stay for the long haul n support me then I LOVE YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH I’LL TRY NOT TO DISSAPOINT YOU
> 
> also, the tony awards were whack and falsetto’s deserved better, but cONGRATS TO DEH FOR ALL THE AWARDS JESUD FUCK !!!!
> 
> follow me on tumblr if you wanna: w0rdsfail


	3. Here Goes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: hinted at depersonalisation, hinted at self-harm (not explicit/acted upon), mentions of bipolar | cycling, brief mention of suicide -in a kinda joking/self-deprecating way
> 
> hooo boy so there's a lot of warning for this chapter, i'm sorry !  
> it's not as angsty as the last chapter though

Connor didn't sleep that night. Just laid back on his bed, stock still, arms by his sides like a corpse and stared up at the ceiling littered with small, plastic glow stars Zoe had given him when they were little kids. They'd lost most of their glow now, just a bunch of pale green dots, but he was reluctant to take them down. He knew it was stupid and cheesy, but it felt like he still had a small part with him of the Zoe he loved.  
He remembered Zoe tearing through a huge store they'd never been in before, full of everything you could ever want. It had looked so huge and full and towering back then, when Connor was still too short to see himself in the bathroom mirror above the sink. Zoe darted between isles, shelf to shelf, patent shoes tapped across the floor in a flurry, space printed skirt billowing around her like Van Gogh's starry night painting. Connor had stood by the shelves full of candy from all over the world and scanned over all the brightly coloured packets, whilst his sister ran about and his parents walked hand in hand, up and down and up and down isles. Zoe had suddenly come back, arms full of numerous small, packages of glow stars and shoved them into Connor's small, thin arms and beamed up at him. She looked so happy, that his own face pulled into a smile. It had been easier to smile back then. It had been easier for Zoe to smile back too. Had been easier for his parents to smile at each other, at their children. 

Then somewhere along the way, Connor had got all messed up and then he messed up everything with his family and just. It was too messed up to be fixed.

Connor let his brain run through the events of the day (he tried to skip over the details -there had been enough of those for the next 84 years) and then through the usual self-deprecating ones he got every night. Those thoughts really made him want to reach into his bottom drawer of his bedside table and scrounge around for his lighter and papers and weed. Though he had no weed now until he could next buy some more, so that plan was out of the window. His fingers instead, latched onto one half of a snapped 2H pencil and a half full bottle of black nail polish -of which he stole from Zoe's nail polish box. She never wore it and Connor was pretty sure she knew he had it and the fact she hadn't shouted at him or demanded it back had let a little blossom of hope bloom in his chest. Although, Zoe could stub that out within seconds the next time she glared at him across the dinner table. He reapplied the paint for something to do and then flopped back onto the bed again to carry on staring at the ceiling.  
Connor had just let himself get sucked into a whirlwind of thoughts than ran through his mind, like an old motion picture film, spotty and crackled and too fast, with jump cuts that took too long to pass. Laggy and out of focus, although somehow raw and too bright to look at head on. He hoped maybe it might tire him out, knock him out stone cold and let him pass the next day just sleeping. (Sleeping was much better than spending the day trying to live and act like he enjoyed being awake.) It hadn't. 

Connor silently watched the light in his bedroom change shades as the hours passed and ticked round the numbers on his clock adjacent to his bed board. Then he'd swung his legs out of bed at the first sign of dawn light at 5:32am, that shot in uniformed white lines through the gaps of his blinds onto his cluttered floor. He wiggled his toes, rolled his ankles, jiggled his legs to try and worm himself back into his body. Exhaustion did that to him sometimes; pulled him out of his actual physical body and he had to pretend not to freak out as he went through the familiar notions of coming back to himself.

This would be so much easier if he could smoke a fucking joint. Then he could just pretend his body felt like this because he was high. It would make this a whole lot more enjoyable.

Connor sighed loudly and broke the silence the house had been in all night, aside from the tick-tock of the hands on his clock and vague, distant snores from his parent’s room that snorted out of his father's mouth. Connor wondered how his mom could sleep beside a man that sounded like an angry, loud tractor that rumbled over lumpy ground. He wondered how she could sleep beside him at all.  
He pressed his face into his hands, his forehead and eyes ached painfully and his hair felt ratty and knotted as he passed his hand shakily through it. He'd have to wash it today. He didn't know if he had the energy to.

Today was a bad day.  
Every day had been a bad day for the past three weeks, but today was A Bad Day. He hoped it might be the end of the cycle of Bad Days, the last was usually the worst. Then it spiralled into a couple weeks of being manic and wired up. Manic Days, (or Hypomania Days -it'd been years ago when he first saw a psychiatrist and it also happened to be the last time he saw one. So, he couldn't really remember what the fuck was wrong with him) were better than Bad Days, but only by a little fraction. He'd feel like a fork being jammed into a plug socket rapid fast and shocked so hard he'd feel the buzz zapping under his skin for days and days and it wouldn't pass for what felt like centuries or sometimes just minutes. Thought it was usually the same amount of time as a depressed cycle, sometimes less. He wouldn't be able to snatch a solid thought to hold onto or finish a simple task or take photos without shaking hands. He'd feel reckless and wild and dizzy and he feel _so much_ at once. It was different, so starkly different to a depressed cycle. 'So much', with a depressed cycle, meant that feelings were more muted and only pressed and suffocated him when he felt really shitty. Really, really shitty. Really fucking shitty to the point that his skin had to be lined up in red to at least feel a little of something that made him feel in control. A little bit like feeling manic for just a tiny second, but without the repercussions of acting on his impulses. Well... kind of.  
Honestly, although being manic was slightly better, he'd still rather shoot himself right through his aching forehead than let his brain take him for a ride and choose for him how he felt every day. That's a little fucked-up. He wondered if Evan had felt like doing that before. That's a fucked-up thing to think. Connor dug his fingers into his face.

Connor stood, his long legs wobbled and he clutched onto his beige bedroom wall as his head spun. His newly painted nails dug into an old band poster still taped up there from 5 years ago and he felt the worn, glossy paper rip a little under his grip. Didn't matter, he didn't listen to much music anymore. Didn't have the energy to. He blinked his eyes for a couple seconds, tried to wash the foggy, sleepy, dizzy feeling out of them and then reached down for the hoodie he'd dumped on the floor last night beside his bag. He slipped it on over his pyjama shirt, an old, burgundy Harry Potter one with a now faded, golden snitch printed on the front. He had got it at a book signing back in the days when his parents liked to treat him, because they knew he'd at least somewhat enjoy it. It was tiny, faded and stupid looking on him now. He didn't really care. It's not like there was anyone else here to see it who hadn't already seen it before.

It took a few more moments for his body to come back and once he was present enough he pulled his door open quickly and quietly, stepped out onto the wide landing and closed it just the same. He tiptoed past Zoe's room, then the bathroom, then his parents room and slipped down the stairs. He felt like a ghost whenever he did this. Just passed through the house, silent, unnoticed, almost invisible. His skin was even pale enough to look like one.  
He reached the bottom of the stairs and realised how hungry he was as he moved towards the kitchen without thought. Then it was confirmed when his stomach gave a giant gurgle and he opened a few cupboards, reached for the first bowl and cereal box he could find. He snatched a spoon from the stupid utensil holder and slumped at the table much like yesterday evening. He ate the cereal dry after he shook it gently into the bowl and crunched through it so fast his stomach groaned in protest.

The cereal was something his mom still bought from the huge store he and Zoe had got the glow stars from. It was a box that had caught Connor's attention as his little sister held onto his jeans and pulled him down the aisles. Zoe had stood on her tippy-toes and pointed at it, _"Do you want that one?" she asked, voice still energetic, happy._  
_Connor had paused by it and he hesitated before nodding, his fast-growing hair fell into his face. Zoe had reached for the box of unfamiliar cereal as far as she could, because Connor still had an armful of the entire galaxy and no free hands to grab it._  
_The box had toppled to the floor with a large 'WHUMP' when she poked the base of it to knock it off its shelf. She scrambled to grab it up off the floor and held it above her head like a trophy. She bounced about, "Can you take photos later? Of the stars and a bowl of this? Can we do it together? Can we, Connor?"_  
_"Sure, Zo." he'd grinned. He began to imagine the compositions of his photographs right there and then._

As easy as that. Agreed and shared and happy about it. The photos they took were now dumped in an album far under his bed, shoved into a corner he didn't care about. It probably still had the glossy stickers of puppies on it that Zoe had animatedly spoken about till he'd caved and bought some. She'd decorated the album however she wanted, with the guidance of their mom, who chuckled as Zoe had jauntily stuck a cartoon golden retriever puppy to Connor's forehead. He’d pealed it off and stuck on the corner of the album.

The cereal suddenly made him feel sick, but he distracted himself by sticking the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, stocked the box of cereal away, then sat at the table again. He needed to go upstairs, but his body started to feel a little wobbly again. He picked at his black nails, the fresh paint scattered onto the table top. He’d just sit for a few minutes and wait for it to pass.  
Connor always felt at loss of what to do in the summer. There wasn't school to give him hours of shit to fill up his time, or homework as a distraction when he was at home, no new book recommendations from the school librarian. Instead, he had days of almost nothing. Days where he stayed in, reread books he'd already read hundreds of times before. Sometimes he just laid down and stared at the ceiling, not-thinking or over-thinking, like he'd done last night. Maybe smoke a joint out of his window if his dad wasn't home. There were a lot of days to go out and take photos, and he did go out, but there were only things he'd already taken photos of and there was only so many kinds of photos you could take. The same old. Nothing new. Just... nothing. The nothingness and how bored he got made him feel like dying. He'd welcome his manic cycle with open arms, because it'd at least fill up his brain and all his time with fake-happy. If he was lucky, it'd last the rest of the summer and stow itself away when school came back around. 

Then, Connor suddenly found himself wishing he had someone to spend the summer with. A friend. Not just himself or the girl who supplied him weed and occasionally lit up with him round the back of the play park the next estate over. Then he wouldn't need his stupid fucking hypomania to make him feel less alone.  
His mind tipped right back into Evan Hansen's Almost Death territory and all the events that followed right up to lying to his mom. And fuck. Evan was _not_ a friend. Never would be a friend. Even if they tried, which they _wouldn't_ , Connor pressed that into his mind, he'd only scare the jumpy boy off. Evan would probably only humour him, just because Connor had called 911 and spent the whole day watching him cry and because Connor had stayed with him the entire time. Anyway, he said he wouldn't think about it. Because none of it happened. Evan Hansen was just a boy who happened to go to the same school as him. Who he'd never spoken to. Ever.

Connor felt his brain fill up slowly, as if he'd dunked his head underwater and let the water rush into his ears. His headache worsened, pressed right against his skull and he knew it was all downhill from there. His day would be a Bad Day and the thought of having to move from this chair was a task he didn't know how to do and oh god he needed to go back upstairs before his family came down here and he needed a shower and he needed to, he needed-

"Oh."

Connor's head snapped round and he had to hold onto the table before his spinning head made him crash to the tiled floor below him. He was so afraid the shit in his brain might come falling out of his ears. Zoe stood in the doorway in her pyjamas and Connor wondered why she was up so early and why she had to come down here right now of all times. Soon he'd be choking on the murky sludge that filled his skull up. He didn't say anything just turned back to the table, stared blankly and swallowed again and again and-  
What was he supposed to be doing?

"Why do you look so depressed?" Zoe snorted and the echoing sounds as she opened the cupboards and grabbed a bowl of the same cereal Connor had just eaten, passed through the room. 

It took a while for Connor to figure out how to talk and he mustered up as much attitude as he could, "Gee, Zoe! Maybe because I am depressed!"

She wrinkled her nose and picked up a spoon. She took some milk from the fridge and poured some over the cereal. Connor watched it fill the bowl. "Dad says you just act that way for attention." The milk was stowed back in the fridge.

Connor felt anger slide through the murk in his brain. Cutting through it like fresh, scalding lava that flowed over old, blackened ashes. They had, had this conversation so many times before, but it never failed to piss him off. He swallowed tightly. "Well. Larry is an asshole who doesn't know shit about me."

Zoe didn't reply, just sat across from Connor and shovelled cereal into her mouth. She wanted to get out of the kitchen as soon as possible, Connor realised. Good. He wanted her to get out as soon as possible too. After a few more bites she glanced up and held her spoon against the edge of the bowl. Tapped it three times. Connor grit his teeth. "Mom said you have a friend?"

Connor didn't have the energy to wriggle uncomfortably, just let the lie pass through him and tried to not think too much of it, "Yeah."

"You're such a liar." Connor's stomach rolled and he pressed a hand to it to force the nausea away. 

"How do you know? You don't know shit about me either, Zoe." Connor spat and clenched his fists.

"I know that you don't have any friends."

Connor bit his lip and stared at the table top where some crumbs from his cereal were scattered. He couldn't look at her, she'd know he was lying in an instant, because even though Zoe didn't know him anymore, she's still be able to tell from old memories. "I do! Evan Hansen is my fucking friend."

"Evan Hansen?" she sounded shocked and he heard the clink of her spoon as it dropped into what sounded like an empty bowl. She would leave soon, thank fuck. Connor swiped the crumbs off the table. He wished she'd drop the subject. "Yes?" he answered defensively.

"You and Evan would never be friends. Jesus. At least pick someone more believable, like, one of the potheads who go to our school. You'd fit right in with those guys."

"What’s so unbelievable about Evan and I being friends?"

Zoe laughed and pushed her bowl from side to side, batted it between her hands. "You're a moody asshole, Connor, and Evan is quiet and ...not an asshole. He's like a scared antelope and you're an angry bison."

"Opposites attract, Zoe." Connor fixed her with a glare.

Zoe stopped pushing the bowl around and raised an eyebrow. She smiled with mirth. He fucking hated it when she smiled like that. It still never looked right on her face and he was forced to confront the fact that the Zoe he used to know so well was now buried deep somewhere else along with their friendship. "Oh, so it's like that, is it?"

That was _e-fucking-nough._ Connor scraped up some energy left in him to throw himself out of his seat and up the stairs. He stomped up them, barged into his father halfway who tried to grab a hold of him like last night, but Connor dodged past. He could hear his dad shout up after him, but Connor tuned the words out till it was white noise, slammed his door closed and locked it. Why the fuck was everyone up so early?! Were they doing it just to fucking ruin his day even more?! He punched the door in three quick successions and then slumped onto the floor in front of it. He was so _tired_. He wanted everyone to just fuck off.  
"Connor?"

"What?!" Connor snapped at his mom and grabbed a fistful of his hair. 

"Sweetie, your father said that it might be a good idea for you to visit Evan today."

"Dad said that?" Connor scoffed and rubbed his red knuckles, "I thought I was grounded?"

"Well...we spoke last night and he's...he's happy that you have a friend and... he also wants to see that you were telling the truth about the film canister-"

Connor stared at the wall in front of him in disbelief, "Are you for real?!" 

His mom carried on like he hadn't interrupted, "I also thought it might be a good idea for you to not be alone today, you didn't seem very happy just now, Connor."

"I'm never happy, mom." Connor pressed his head back against the wall and rubbed at his sleepy eyes. He really fucking wanted to crawl back under his covers and die for the day. Just talking to his mom irritated him enough to make him want to slam his head against his bedroom wall and pass the fuck out.

There was a slight awkward pause where Cynthia struggled to find something to respond with, then settled on: "Have a good day, Connor. Get that canister back, okay?" 

"Wait!" Connor scrambled up when he heard her begin to walk away and unlocked his door, yanked it open so fast that the wind from it blew both their hair into their faces. His mom looked over his appearance and her smile tightened. She brushed her hair out of her face. Connor knew he looked a mess and he didn't bother to shove his hair out of his own face. He cleared his throat and tried to put on the most disinterested voice he could muster, "Where are you even going? It's super fucking early."

There was a flicker of hesitation that passed over Cynthia's features before she swallowed and sped out, "Zoe has a jazz band concert a few hours out of town and we didn't think you'd want to go. You don't usually come out so we... I didn't think to ask. I'm sorry, Connor. We'll be back by dinner time."

Oh. He nodded sharply and gritted his teeth. He folded his arms over his chest and tried not to be upset that his family hadn't even let him know he'd be alone all day. They had just decided he'd have to work it out when he woke up. They'd just assumed he didn't want to go. They never wanted to include him anymore. Connor used to love taking photos at Zoe's jazz band performances. There were always so many cool looking instruments and stages. "Yeah. Well. Whatever. I wanted to see Evan anyway." He lied and scuffed his toes along the runner between his dusty grey carpet and the freshly hoovered cream carpet on the landing. 

Cynthia nodded and pressed a kiss to Connor's greasy cheek. "Have a shower before you go out."

She turned and headed downstairs quickly and left him stood there on his own. Connor growled low in his throat and grabbed a lock of his knotted hair and pulled painfully on it. 

Great. 

So he was having a bad day.  
He was at fucking hospital all yesterday, lost his canister, got in trouble for jack shit, made up a fake friendship, finished off his weed days ago, didn't sleep at all, got a little too fucking nostalgic, Zoe pissed him off, his family are deserting him for the day and didn't think to tell him. And now he has to figure out a way to find Evan Hansen's house and actually make himself look physically decent enough to go out in public. Too much, too fast. He wasn't even out of this side of the swing yet! Give him a fucking moment to shuck out of his depression skin!

Connor didn't _do_ anything on bad days. 

He latched onto his skinny arm and dug his nails into it through his hoodie sleeve, closed his eyes and took in a few deep breaths.

He just needed to get this day out of the way and then he could lay in bed and not move for a week. After that he didn't need to think about Evan again and his film canister could be shoved in his father's face, so he could go out, officially ungrounded and buy some weed. God he wanted a joint.

He ignored the sounds of his family as they took their time to get ready, collected Zoe’s shit together, leave the house, the defeated sound of his mom calling goodbye. After the front door had slammed shut and one of the cars outside started up, he scrounged together some semi-clean clothes to take to the bathroom with him that he had picked out of the pile off his floor. He figured dowsing the clothing with axe spray after he'd put them on might cover up the fact they really did need to be washed. Not like he wanted to impress Evan anyway. Why the fuck was he so obsessed with him? He was just a fleeting moment passing through his life and disappearing as soon as he came. After this he wouldn't exist in Connor's world.

He twisted the bath taps and cranked the shower on. Even stood beside the tub he felt his energy deplete. He stripped off sluggishly, avoided looking at himself entirely and clambered into the bath like a stumbling drunk guy. Once he was stood under the shower, braced with one of his scarred arms shoved onto the wall, he mostly just watched the water flow down the drain and drip off his hair onto his face, then off his chin. Who in the hell can do this every day? How is anyone able to get out of bed and get washed and dressed -and enjoy it too?  
Connor did his best at washing his hair and got tired halfway through when he lathered up his hair with a shampoo chosen at random from the rack at the end of the tub. In the end, he just stuck his head back under the spray. He didn't even wince when it washed into his eyes and made them sting like hell. Just kicked at the shower bottle rack angrily till a bunch of them tipped out into the base of the bath. He couldn’t be bothered to pick them up and put them back.  
He decided to just go the whole hog whilst he was in there and brush his teeth for a grand total of desperately less minutes than he should. That way he didn't have to do so many separate things. He fucking wished he could be dry and in his clothes and on the way magically to Evan's house despite not even knowing where it was.

Fuck that was a huge problem. That was a massive problem.  
How would he find Evan's house? He wasn't even sure which direction it could be in or how far away it might be or what it looked like or even what door number he'd be at. It's not like Connor could go through a yellow page’s book in search of his name, because who the fuck even owned one of those anymore? Did they still even get made? He wasn't that creepy enough to, like, hack into his social media or some shit either -if Evan even did have social media. Although even if he did, Connor wouldn't go the easy way about it and actually directly _message him._

Something dawned on him as he abruptly shut the water off after loitering there aimlessly and let himself drip dry where he stood. Jared Kleinman. He grabbed a bright aquamarine towel from the towel rack and wrapped it tight around himself. He didn't want to think about Jared Kleinman whilst stood in a bath tub, stark naked.

Jared was friends with Evan, or something. At least he'd seen them together a bunch of times at school and he knew they'd been best friends back in elementary school. They'd been attached at the hip once and he was pretty sure they used to have matching, hand woven friendships bracelets. Connor had been jealous.  
Jared probably knew Evan's address and Connor still had him on facebook after that one time in the same year he almost punched his tooth out, when they were forced to do a group project together. The group project was a total fuck up and they both got given an F and blamed it on each other. Connor wasn't sure why they hadn't deleted each other off of there if he was honest. He didn't really check it enough to care.  
Well. Jared was his only shot he could think of to get this complicated shit sorted out. Connor felt sick at the thought of having to send him a message, actually physically type words with his own fingers, actually interact with him in the slightest. The boy irritated him to no end and the sight of his face always made him visibly cringe. Jared just had an aura of unlikable-ness. Much like himself, to be honest. Except, Kleinman, came with an extra sprinkle of annoying. A whole giant tub of sprinkles. Nasty, out of date sprinkles. A whole dowsing of them.

Connor sighed, dried off lazily and yanked on his clothes awkwardly like a toddler still trying to learn which holes to shove his head and arms through. He still didn't look at himself. He scrubbed his hair so it was mostly dry and ran a hairbrush through the tangles (his hair was getting too long, his dad was right), it was one of Zoe's -pastel pink with plastic lavender stars on it. The plastic bristles on it still had traces of the indigo dye on them from when Zoe had put streaks of the colour into her hair for a day, before their dad found out and shouted at her and made her dye it back to normal.  
He left the stuffy, steaming bathroom to slump at his huge oak desk, which was once neatly covered in art supplies. He had to kick a few piles of mess out of the way to tug the chair out and then booted up his unused MacBook that hid under his multiple filled up sketchbooks and other crap he hadn't touched in a while.

Once it had loaded and got up to speed he opened Safari, typed Facebook into the search bar and took a few failed attempts at logging into his account. When he finally cracked it, he tried to shove down the disappointment that he had no new notifications except 3 from Facebook itself and a 6-month-old game invite from some relative he barely knew.

He opened a new chat window after he hunted the list for Jared's name and stared hard at it. Then at the green online button next to Jared's name. His hands poised, unmoving over the keyboard. Fuck. He really needed to do this. He couldn't fucking chicken out now. He swallowed, took a few deep breaths and typed. He clicked send without trying to think too much about it.

**Connor Murphy**  
_-Can I ask u something?_

He was surprised to see it read right away and his stomach curled tight as the speech bubble dotted. He twisted his fingers around the strings on his hoodie

**Jared Kleinman**  
_-what the hell do you want, murphy?_  
_-since when did we even talk?_

Connor felt his gut fill with simmering anger that had slowly begun to build up. The lava came back again. Only a few seconds into messaging the dick head and he already felt like punching him.

**Connor Murphy**  
_-U know Evan Hansen, right?_

**Jared Kleinman**  
_-he's a family friend. i don't really know him tbh_  
_-why?_

Here comes the hard part. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Typed.

**Connor Murphy**  
_-do u know where he lives?_  
_-i need his aderess_  
_-*address_

Did that sound too shifty? Connor balled his fists again. He anxiously waited for a reply which took a few minutes to come. Jared was probably doing it on purpose.

**Jared Kleinman**  
_-why do you need his address?_  
_-are you stalking him or something?_  
_-haha_  
_-sounds like something you'd do. creep. *laughing/crying emoji*_

Connor snarled and punched his desk before he stabbed out a reply.

**Connor Murphy**  
_-just give me his fuckin address!_  
_-why the fukc does it matter????_

**Jared Kleinman**  
_-jesus ! calm down, hot topic. no need to get your little emo panties in a twist!_  
_-whatever. i don't care what you want it for hahahaha_  
_-it's not like i'm really friends with him, so..._

Connor was relieved to see him give him an address. He just hoped he'd not played a prank on him and given him the wrong one.

**Connor Murphy**  
_-thx._  
_-this better b his actual address bc i wont fuckign hesitate 2 punch another one of ur teeth out if it's not_

Jared read his message, but didn't reply. He'd have to just believe him, then. Connor copied the address onto his phone notes and shutdown his laptop. He closed the lid with a bang. Right. Okay. Time to shove it into his phone's GPS and go on a stupid trail hunt to find it.

He couldn't believe he was going to do this.

The route plan appeared on his screen.

_'take a right 10 meters down-'_

Here fucking goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoLY FUCK i need to stop jam-packing chapters with Connor's thoughts, bc even writing them for me makes me feel super heavy -but i wan't this to be written realistically to show Connor's thought process. i noticed how a lot of fics aren't from Connor's POV which means you don't get to see that he's a real person with complicated and raw feelings - not just a kid with anger issues. plus it kinda helps me a lot to sort out how i'm feeling bc i've got my own brain shit going on too and writing is always hella therapeutic for me  
> i think once Evan's added into the mix, there will be more stuff for me (and Connor!) to focus on, so it'll open things up and move shit along a bit. i'm so sorry this drags so much, i'm just stalling bc i still don't know how this is gonna go!
> 
> as always, thank you so, so much for the comments and kudos ! i always wanna reply, but i feel like i'd keep saying the same things in response, but your comments really do help me a lot, they keep me writing <33
> 
> follow me on tumblr if you wanna: w0rdsfail


	4. You Have Reached Your Destination.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for: brief self hair pulling, kind of vague implied mention of self-harm but bARELY -honestly hardly at all, Connor just casually wanting to die, calling Evan out on his stutter,

Connor walked for a fucking long time. A fucking fuck of a long time. His boots had begun to rub a sore blister into both of his heels and his charcoal grey hoodie and ripped jeans had clung to his body, like a clammy latex suit. He had to periodically lift his free hand to push his fingers through his damp hair to get it out of his face, which was equally as damp. He felt like an ugly, swampy cryptid just sliding along the sidewalk. A cryptid that’s allergic to the sun with an incurable sweating problem. Jesus Christ, was the heat affecting his thought pattern or had he smoked a joint before leaving? Weed. _God_ , he needed some weed.

His phone still barked out robotic sounding directions and Connor was tired of it. He'd been lead way over town for 10 minutes shy of an hour (he was pretty fucking sure it'd taken him the long way around) and the houses were getting smaller and the streets a little less tidy. He hoped Evan at least lived in a decent and clean area, otherwise he might turn right back to his huge house like a prissy, high and mighty, semi-rich boy.  
Connor supposed he should've been that boy, the one his dad had always wanted; a tough, money bragging jock who used a baseball bat for actual games, instead of smashing shit up like Connor did when he was angry or manic or whatever. Those kinda guys, the sporty guys in tiny shorts (that Connor totally didn't like to think of) made him want to kill himself. Kinda like everything else did. But they were high up on the list of things. 

Suddenly the route on his phone screen grew incredibly closer to the destination which was marked with a big, obnoxious, pulsing red dot. Connor's eyes widened a little in surprise. How long had he zoned out for? He looked up and about the rows of small, narrow houses that were pressed so tightly together that they looked like the bellows of an accordion. They looked alright. Plain and average. Connor could do plain and average. His eyes squinted along the numbers as he passed by -tried to find house number 183. His heart thudded as he got to 178...179...  
He was on the right side of the street. Fuck. Okay.  
180....181...182. Oh god. There it was. 183 printed boldly on a plastic placard.

‘ _You have reached your destination_ ’

He locked his phone and stared at the house in front of him, painted a pastel yellow over scruffy brick. It was faded and untended to, as if it had been hand painted years ago with a cheerful passion and then forgotten when it needed a new coat. It was kinda sad looking. A singular small, silver, aged car parked on the curb in front, there was no driveway, just a rickety, rusted metal black gate, boxed in by low, grey concrete walls and conifer bushes. A rocky path that lead up to a tiny porch and a plain white door. A door that had no obnoxious lion knocker, only a simple doorbell beside it that Connor guessed would just do the classic ‘ _ding dong_ ’ instead of some obscure bell. Good ol' classic The Book of Mormon kind of shit. Come on, Connor, focus.  
The small amount of grass laid out in front of the house looked a bright and amazing emerald green that was well tended to - no dry, yellow, dead grass he’d find in the far shaded, abandoned reaches of The Apple Orchard (there were always so many cool shaped fallen trees -) Connor _focus._ The rest of the garden had happy, beautifully bloomed flowers dotted in uniformed lines although they were all in colourful mixed groups. They were all different types and sizes that he couldn't for the life of him identify. Just a splash of rainbows.

Connor's hand reached up for his camera which had been hung by the faux leather strap round his neck and it was now sticky and uncomfortable against it. He'd forgotten his camera the entire journey, too invested in trying to put together his plan of action. His fingers slid over the lens and he turned the zoom in a fidgety way, before he realised, _ah yes_ , he was at Evans house - hopefully, if Kleinman wasn't fucking with him. 

So, back to the awful cause at hand. He was here to get his canister back and then travel another gruelling, sweaty hour back to his house. He pocketed his phone to free up his perspiring palms and wiped his brow. He hoped that Evan wouldn't shut the door in his face, just because he looked in need of another shower and stunk like - what Connor guessed, to be an actual pig.

He hesitated and looked at the rectangular window to the right of the door, the cream blinds were pulled down so tightly that you couldn't see inside at all and Connor was thankful for that. That meant no one inside would see the way he awkwardly held onto the gate, his fingers gripped tightly onto the metal of it like an old man bending over a walking stick. He felt the rust as it flaked and stuck to his hand. _Come on, Connor_ , he repeated to himself again. Just ring the bell, greet Evan, ask for the canister back, have it given back to him with zero conversation, then leave. That’s all. Then he could go back to the house and climb into bed to have a lovely depression nap for the rest of the day. Larry would knock on his bedroom door halfway through to deliver a plate of food, ask for the evidence he so desperately desired and leave him alone for the night. Sounded good. He just needed to get this over with first.

"You’ve got this, Connor." he whispered to himself under his breath and was shocked for a moment that he’d positively encouraged himself. He unlatched the gate before he pushed it open, slow and cautious in case it made a tell-tale squeak that someone was coming up the path.  
As soon as he had taken one minuscule step into the front yard, Connor felt like he had trespassed. He was dressed completely in black which kind of made him look like No Face from Spirited Away and he was stood in a place that would give the Once-ler a run for his money. It was like a weird gross crossover and he wanted to leave immediately. He breath in, just get this over with and you can go, breathed out.  
He almost tiptoed up the path to the low porch and stepped over the little cracks and dips in it so that he wouldn't trip over and embarrassingly die right on Evan's door step. His camera would probably get crushed too, so he'd come back from the dead and put that thing back together piece by piece.  
He treaded up the one singular step to the door and paused with his pointer finger over the bell. His nails already needed to be repainted. He took in another deep breath, stabbed the button once.

_ding dong_  
Huh. He was right about the noise. He tapped the worn-down soles of his boots nervously and stared up at the hanging flower baskets either side of the porch roof that he hadn't noticed. The door swung open just as he'd craned to see them better and Connor's neck snapped to the open doorway so fast he feared he had whiplash. 

A small and humble looking woman stood in the doorway, she smiled with a questioning look in her eyes and before Connor could say anything at all she jumped in, "Hi! Are you one of the new neighbours that just moved in next door? Yesterday your baseball came over our backyard fence and I've been meaning to give it back, I can go grab it if you’d like me too?"  
"Oh, uh. No. I don't live next door, it's not my baseball, sorry." Connor shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets to ground himself a little, because he hadn’t expected a woman to open the door. Evan was supposed to open it. He fucking wished it was his baseball he had come to collect, instead of a film canister that had caused one giant mess. "I came to see Evan... he lives here, right?"  
She visibly seemed to light up like a Christmas tree and Connor felt as his stomach clenched in a nauseous way at the familiar face his own mom pulled when he had at least tried to do something productive or good. "Ooooh! Are you Connor? The boy who drove Evan to the hospital?"  
Connor's brow furrowed at the lie. So, Evan had lied too? What the fuck. "Sure?"

She gestured inside and angled herself sideways to free up some space, "Please come in, Connor. It's lovely to meet you! Evan doesn't usually have friends over so this is a nice surprise. I'm Heidi by the way, Evan's mom." Her energy seemed to be endless and Connor felt even more tired than he had been.

This was not what was supposed to be happening. Fucking hell. Couldn't she just get Evan for him? "Ah, no. I've got this thing I need to-" he jabbed his thumb behind him at the gate. One boot was placed back on the path.

"At least come in for a glass of water, sweetie, you look like you need one. I'll grab that for you and then you can go on upstairs for as long as you need! Ev's in his room resting up."

Well, fuck. Okay. He'd have to deal with this then. Right. Shit shit shit. How could he change this?  
"Um, alright."  
No no _no!_ It's not alright! He found himself slowly moving as he walked past her into a narrow hallway that smelt homely. This was not the plan at all. He really needed to leave, the backlash from Larry wouldn’t matter. God fucking shit damn. He wished he'd just left Evan on the forest floor. A wave of guilt rushed over him at that thought, because his cold-hearted self did care about that whole ordeal. That feeling made him want to throw up.  
Heidi closed the door after him and the sound as it clicked shut made him feel like he was trapped in a cage. No backing out now. His fingers gripped on tight around his camera as his body has begun to shake. She lead Connor to the simple and cluttered kitchen -one that would make Cynthia Murphy scream -at the back of the house, where she filled up a Mickey Mouse glass from the tap. She handed it over to Connor who took it hesitantly, stretched his arm to reach her and forced himself to only take a sip of the cool liquid, instead of chugging the whole thing like he wanted to. He had manners, despite what people might think. Or what Larry might think.  
He milled uncomfortably in the middle of the room, shuffled on his feet as Heidi leant against the counter. He took another sip, adjusted his standing position. When could he see Evan? "Thanks."  
There was an awkward pause that made Connor sweat some more as he struggled to find something to fill it, however Heidi enthusiastically started to speak again, "I just wanted to say, thank you so much for looking out for Evan." Her voice was drenched with so much sincerity that Connor almost choked, "He didn't tell me about you until I had to take him home from the hospital, but you sounded like a very nice boy and it was so kind of you to do that for him. It's nice to know he's had someone there to talk to for the past few months."

_MONTHS?_

Jesus Christ, it was like Evan had created a life story for the two of them. What would happen next? Going to prom together? Marriage? A family of seven? 

"Thanks. It's um, no problem, really. Just helping a pal out and stuff. Like friends do. Could I go and see him now? I told him yesterday I'd check up on him, so..." The lies fell from his mouth so easily that it made him feel sick. He sipped some more water and pulled a hand through his hair. What was he _doing?!i >_ He wondered if Evan had had this same whole thought process.  
"Of course, go on up! Door to the left of the stairs."

"Thank you." Connor turned back on himself and felt Heidi as she stared warmly at his back from across the room. He left the room as quick as what was socially acceptable and tried not to speed up the hallway. Time get this over with.  
He reached some narrow, steep stairs and clambered up them like a clumsy, daddy long legs and with each step he took he felt even more nauseous dread fill up his stomach and he glanced at the ascending photo frames along the wall hung in a diagonal line as he went upwards to take his mind off it. They were all the smallest and cheapest sized photos you could buy at school; all of Evan's school photos throughout the years, spread upwards like a wonky timeline. It started from when he was a tiny 4 year old with chubby, rosy cheeks and happy bright eyes, right up until the one everyone had to have taken at the beginning of the last school year, he looked kind of tired and pale and not so happy like all the more recent photo were. Connor wasn't surprised after the...the tree incident. He would've looked at the other photos dotted round them if he hadn't had a more pressing matter at hand that he wanted to get over with _right-the-fuck-now._

There it was, the door to the left. Connor knew it was the correct one, because glued onto it was a wooden ‘EVAN’ in bubble writing painted a bright blue and someone had stuck little flower stickers round it. That was kind of cute. He wondered how long they'd been stuck on there and he stepped a little closer to see that some of them were pealed and scratched. Each sticker was methodically put into place. 

_"Mom, is that you?"_ There was a shuffle and a small squeak of bed springs, then light taps of someone’s feet, Evan’s, as he walked toward the door, "Because, because I know you l-l-like, like making soup but, that one kinda of, uh, sucked."

__

Connor would've laughed if Evan hadn't pulled the door open right afterwards. The boy had messy cowlicked hair and stood there in flannel pyjama pants which looked super soft and an old, faded striped shirt that Connor was pretty sure he’d seen the boy wear in school when he was 12. His cast stood out like a sore thumb, white and clunky on his broken arm. His free hand tightened round the door knob. "Um." Then the door closed. In Connor’s face. Just like he’d thought. 

_Well,_ Connor thought, _shit._ How the hell was he supposed to approach this? Should he knock? Fuck, okay, he'd have to knock.  
He knocked his knuckles on the door, right under the wooden ‘EVAN’. "Hey, uh, Evan. Can I come in or like...stand in your doorway or whatever?" Wow Connor, you're so good with words! 

There was silence for a moment "Why, a-are you here?" His voice was close to the door. 

"You have my canister." Connor cut to the chase, because this was so awkward it was unreal. 

The door creaked open a tiny amount and Evan popped his head through it. He didn't make eye contact. "You, you should probably come i-in for, for a bit because, because um my m-m-mom thinks we're friends? I, um. Might have, have t-told her that we are." 

Connor smiled a bit at the irony, his mouth closed and barely tipped upwards was as close as a smile he could manage, "I told my mom that too." What a pair of liars they were.  
"Oh." Evan pulled the door open wider like his mom had. Connor considered the room for a moment and found everything was very tidy, except for the bed covers being strewn back with a sketchbook and a few pencils laid on it. Everything was a matched theme of white upon blue, blue upon white. The room was arranged in neat lines and there were no dirty clothes to be seen. Damn, he wished his room was that tidy. He looked down at himself, worried he might mess up Evan's room, because he'd look like a smudge of dirt in there, especially because of the white carpet. He tugged his boots off one handed -he still had that Mickey Mouse glass in his hand- and left them outside the door. He hoped that would make less of a mess in case he had mud or gravel or gum or something from the forest on them. Some of the water dripped on his jeans and onto his bare knee as he straitened up, because he was so tall that every time he bent over to pick stuff up or put stuff down, he folded over like a closed ironing board. Evan was still stood with the door open. Here fucking goes. One more step till he could go back to the house and into his bed. 

Connor entered the room and awkwardly stood in the middle of it like he had in the kitchen, his hand clasped round the glass, he 100% didn't look like he belonged there. Evan sat cross legged on his bed, he angled himself Connor's way and pointed at the white desk by him. "You can um, sit there, maybe? M-mom, mom does that some-sometimes." 

"Okay." This was the most stilted conversation Connor had ever had. He pulled out the chair and sat on it, legs splayed out like an awkward giraffe as he tried not to touch anything aside from the plastic chair and the floor beneath his feet. He sat the Mickey Mouse glass on the desk on top of a placemat with a potted plant picture on it. Connor noticed the laptop beside it was a chunky, off-brand one and he guessed everything in this house was probably the same.  
Once he got as comfy as he could get with his back completely straight and his mismatched socked feet on tiptoes, he brought up the question, "So, do you actually have my canister or are we like, gonna play friendship charades with your mom now that I'm here?" 

Evan shrugged, "Both I guess?" He moved to the end of his bed where a dresser sat, a small bowl of half-eaten, unidentifiable soup was on it and he grabbed the black canister that hid behind it. "You uh, left it, you left it beside me when you, you um, y-you went. So I took it." He handed it over gently, a huge distance apart from him and Connor took it just as gently, he tried not to spook him. Zoe was right, Evan was like a scared antelope. "I hope th-thats okay? I didn't want to, want to, want to leave it behind." 

"You stutter a lot." Connor said without meaning to and he felt the guilt as it stabbed him harshly in his chest, it practically winded him. He watched Evan collapse into himself as he sat back down. Connor hurried to shove the canister into his hoodie pocket. He wanted to melt into the fucking floor and down into the Earth and just fucking burn to death in the scalding hot core and die. Why couldn't he just be nice for fucking once? This boy had tried to kill himself yesterday and now he was shitting on his self-esteem? God, he hated himself. He wished he'd been the one to pitch himself out of the tree -except he'd do right. 

"Are you alright?" 

Connor started and realised he had a hand clenched and tangled in his hair, the long locks twisted round his knuckles. He had yanked on them painfully and the strands almost ripped from his scalp. "Yeah." He took his hand away and found that Evan was still curled up like a wood louse. Connor’s skin felt sweaty and clammy again and he took his camera from his neck and slowly set it down beside Evan's laptop. "Uh, sorry. I shouldn't have said that." When had Connor ever said sorry in the past three years? He wiped the sweat away from his neck and then subtly dug his fingers into his arm through his hoodie. It didn't even hurt. Everything had healed up. 

"Oh, oh no. That’s fine. It's um, Jared? J-Jared Kleinman, he, he says s-stupid things about it all the, all the t-time. Doesn't matter. I get used to i-i-it." Evan almost whispered the whole thing and Connor saw that the boy had begun to rock back and forth a little, then he hummed a bit under his breath too, but then abruptly stopped as if he had forgotten that another person was with him. 

"Kinda does matter. My little cousin has a stutter, though her one is a different to yours but, it's um, still shitty to say stuff like that." Connor couldn't believe the stuff he was saying. Was he having...an actual conversation? A long conversation? With a practical stranger? A 'friendly' one without an argument? Jesus Christ, wait until he told his mom. 

"Oh! That’s um, cool" Evan smiled at that and he rocked again, though more happily and obviously as his body uncurled a little. _Maybe that’s just some weird anxiety mannerism or something?_ Connor thought. 

Connor nodded and tapped his feet, "I should go, probably. Thanks for hanging onto the canister for me." He stood up and made for the door, but Evan reached for him then drew his hand back quickly. "You okay?" He stopped and asked dumbly and looked down at Evan. He realised he hadn't even asked Evan that yet. It's probably something you should say after someone's tried to kill theirself. 

Evan wiggled uncomfortably and didn't meet his eyes. Had he even met Connor's eyes at all? Geeze, this guy's anxiety was super bad. He couldn't imagine living with that. "Did you m-maybe, uh, maybe wanna exchange emails?" 

Connor frowned. "Why?" 

"Because um, I told my mom that um, um we, we started emailing before we, we actually made f-f-friends. Like a project? Or something?" 

Connor barked out a laugh, "Damn you really have this figured out, don't you.” 

Evan bit his lip and rubbed his fingers over the knee of his pyjama pants, the fabric there was so worn down it looked like it might rip soon. 

Okay. Connor could play along. It'd make his mom happy, probably. "Okay then. Sure. At least then we can figure out how our fake friendship is working so we don’t accidentally fuck up and say shit that doesn’t match up.” 

Evan brightened and scrambled for his sketchbook and Connor briefly saw a sketch of a plant that had slowly come together as Evan had filled in the shadows and left negative space. It was relieving that at least they had drawing in common, it’d give them something to email about. Evan flipped to the back of the book and wrote his email address in wobbly letters, his hand shook a lot and he held the pencil weirdly; his fingers all splayed out as if he couldn't bare his fingers touching. 

He waited as Evan ripped the page out of the book and handed it over to Connor. "I'll guess I'll email you then." He folded the paper and shoved it into his hoodie pocket, opened Evan's door and snatched up his boots. 

"I guess so.” 

Connor pulled his boots on and glanced up at Evan, “Bye.” 

Evan nodded “Bye.” and closed his door. 

_I’ll let myself out then_ , Connor snorted. He clambered back down the stairs as he still sorted out his boots and when he got to the bottom of them he went to the front door immediately and pulled the handle down and unfortunately, it opened with a long squeak.  
He heard a noise come from the kitchen, “Are you leaving now, Connor? You know, you’re welcome back anytime-” Connor cut Heidi off and sped out the door, basically slammed it shut and almost vaulted over the fence. Time to get right on back home and shove the email away for a later date and welcome his bed with his tired out depressed self. 

It wasn’t till he was 45 minutes of the way home, that he’d reached up for his camera to take a photo of a granite gargoyle sat on top of someone porch, did he realise that _for fucking shit fuck in hell_ , he’d left his fucking camera behind at Evan’s. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've just recently lost my job which has taken a huge hit to my self-esteem and anxiety and tbh i've felt so shitty that my motivation for aNYTHING is at maybe 10%, so this was super hard to write  
> i basically feel like Tony in Iron Man 2 when he's basically dying and his Iron Man suit looses power so quick bc his arc reactor get burned out -what i'm saying is that my brain isn't doing great, i feel super fried n tired and it took me so long to write this even though it sucks lmao (same goes for making art or talking to ppl or getting outta bed) 
> 
> i'm so sorry this is such a short and disappointing one, i'll do better next time, i promise!
> 
> a gd piece of news tho is that i'm going to see The Book Of Mormon tomorrow on Westend !!! and someone outside in their car is playing Falsettos !!! aaaaand i think i finally have this fic mapped out with what direction i wanna take it fuckin fiNALLY 
> 
> \-------------  
> as always, thank you so so so much for the comments and for reading, you're always super lovely and it means the world to me <33
> 
> follow me on tumblr if u wanna: w0rdsfail


	5. ! not a new chapter !

this is gonna be a temporary post on here !!!

hello to whoever is still reading!

i've been in a creative rut lately and i'm having a tough time with my epilepsy and anxiety, so i've been working through that and focusing on other shit. so writing hasn't been at the front of my mind and whenever i've tried to write, either nothing came out or when it did, it came out so shit i scrapped it.

i was gonna post a chapter a month for this fic and i set that as a goal, but i missed last month and it looks like i'll miss this month too hhhhh

but !!!! i'll definitely continue writing this, because i've really enjoyed writing it so far! just gotta get my head screwed on and in the right place before i do

i hope all of you have a gr8 day !!!! & i'm so, so sorry for being gone !! i'll cya later alligators

-Gabe


End file.
